Maverick. Trailblazer. Wizard. Genius. Pathfinder. Whatever you want to call him, Mr Jeff Beck can't be defined by any one of these adjectives. An artist of his caliber graces the Earth maybe once in a millennium. Decade by decade, album by album, and even song by song, he has redefined the Electric Guitar and paved the way for new and innovative ways to use the instrument, continuing to juice out true artistry the instrument can offer.
Starting out with his blues influences, moving on to rock, to progressive rock to jazz fusion to experimental crossovers, he has done it all and, in my opinion, sits on top of the guitar players' pyramid. Instead of writing about his musical career, which is on the Internet anyway, I would like to dwell on the influence he has had on the way I play my instrument and write my own music. Jeff Beck has given birth to so many different styles and a legion of electric guitar players. I am one of them, although I’ve never ever met him or heard him live in concert real-time.
So, this is my Jeff Beck story, about how he helped me search for my own guitar sound.
Being born in Kolkata in 1983, growing up in the 90's and picking up the guitar in 1999, I didn't have a thorough idea about the culture of popular western music, relying solely on bits and pieces of information I could gather. Unlike today, it was difficult those days to access music we wanted to listen to. In Kolkata, you had to find obscure nooks and corners to get your hands on a particular record or audio cassette. As a child, and during my early years of playing the guitar, I was exposed to the music of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby-Stills-Nash & Young, The Doors, et al, because of my mother's record collection. But I took a massive interest towards 90's Alternative Rock because of my childhood friend Neil Roy Chowdhury, who used to stay in my neighbourhood, and whose father was an NRI based in London. So he would get all the CDs and cassettes of Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Radiohead and all these 90's bands from the UK. He used to play the guitar as well — a Yamaha Pacifica Electric Guitar. Naturally, I wanted to pick up the guitar too, and learned a little bit from him.
Listening to the masters
After my Class X boards, I joined guitar lessons offered by my first teacher, Aniruddha Mukherjee, who used to be a neighbour too and played in the covers band, 'Warm Dust' in the early 90's. He was the one who said, "Why do you listen to these 90's guys? If you want to be a real guitar player, listen to the masters — Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore, Carlos Santana, David Gilmour and the like." So I started listening to anything I could lay my hands on. One day in 2001, I came across a pirated cassette in a shop on Free School Street called "Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop". And when I heard the album, it blew my mind. I had no idea a guitar could be played like that. By then, I was well into Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Eric Clapton and of course David Gilmour. But, Beck was something entirely different. It took me more than five intense listening sessions to actually fathom that this was the sound of an electric guitar.
Time moved on, my Class XII boards were approaching and music had to take a back seat. After my exams in March 2002, I started playing with my first band ‘Insomnia’ which started out as my school band. I also signed up for guitar lessons from the one and only Amyt Datta. Amyt da's lessons shook me to the core. After the first few classes, I realized how deep music actually is and how much of hard work I have to put in. I started challenging myself on my instrument and tried to absorb whatever I could from the international greats and senior guitar players of Kolkata.
That ‘special’ track
Insomnia had its first paid gig at R.G.Kar Medical College in September 2002 (I was 18 then). We played Stand On It (from Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop), the first Jeff Beck tune that I picked up. We probably made a hash of it, but it will always hold a very special place in my heart. Having been a massive Pink Floyd fan, I had, by then, started to collect solo albums of Roger Waters and David Gilmour as well. Jeff Beck featured on Waters' album Amused to Death, which was the second record of Jeff Beck’s that I heard. He was absolutely phenomenal, and this time I started to get into his playing technique, and how he managed to get all the sounds which seemed impossible to achieve on the guitar.
But I soon realized that playing like that was quite impossible. But I started collecting Jeff Beck's music for listening pleasure. This was during 2003-2008. The albums I would listen to regularly were Blow by Blow, There and Back, Truth, and of course Guitar Shop. In 2008-09, I came across something that changed my life forever. A double DVD set of the Crossroads Guitar Festival 2004. It featured all my favourite players and many whom I had never heard of before. I picked it up. There were two Jeff Beck tunes on it (featuring Tal Wilkenfeld on bass, Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Tony Hymas on keyboards) — 'Cause We Ended As Lovers' and 'Big Block'.
It was as though I could now literally see what he was doing on the guitar. And that made me ecstatic. I watched that DVD till it stopped working, and I kept on working on my guitar playing to arrive at a tone which could be somewhat close to that of the master. Then I came across the album, You Had it Coming. And when I saw Jeff Beck play Nadia, I realized that I HAD TO PICK IT UP note for note. The Live at Ronnie Scott's DVD, one of the best music concerts of all time, provided a visual cheat sheet. So I did manage to pick up the tune, somewhat, and started playing it on stage every week at Someplace Else with my band at the time (2005-15), Crystal Grass. Gradually, I could see myself getting better at it. It felt like I was singing my heart out. I discovered the sheer power one single note can hold, an that everything depends on “how” and not “how many”. I now realize that it was because of that exercise, the Jeff Beck sound found its footprint on my playing and guitar tone. By 2007 I had upgraded to a 57 reissue US-made Fender Stratocaster, and that helped immensely in chasing Jeff Beck's sound. By 2013, my own trio was functioning fully, and we used to cover Big Block in all our gigs back then until of course the sound of The Bodhisattwa Trio changed dramatically.
The Beck footprint
Over the years till now, I have undergone a huge change in my playing, my compositions and my musical understanding. And Jeff Beck was always there among my top 4 5 influences/inspirations as a guitar player, along with my teacher Amyt Datta, David Gilmour, Wayne Krantz and other stalwarts. During the pandemic, I studied quite a bit about setting up a guitar and the mechanical details of the instrument. While doing so, Jeff Beck's technique became a lot clearer and I could actually attempt some of his outrageous techniques without sounding terrible. I gained confidence. If you listen to The Bodhisattwa Trio's latest single Lunar Month (released in 2021), and my debut solo album, Darkest Days and Brightest Nights, Jeff Beck's footprint on my guitar playing is clearly present as an important building block of my sound.
I am heartbroken at Jeff Beck’s untimely passing as a musician and a fanboy. But he has left a volume of work that can inspire guitar players like me across two lifetimes. It is useless to try and imitate him _ Rick Beato puts it aptly when he summarizes: “Jeff Beck is uncopyable". Rather, it is my aspiration to try and think like him, try to understand the things he understood, hear the things that he heard inside his head, and take these ideas and feel it in my soul. And build my own sound, develop on my own journey, and find my own voice in the musical universe. As I celebrate Jeff Beck's life and his legacy, I am discovering him yet again by listening to his album, Emotion and Commotion on loop.
May you smile upon us from the heavens, Mr Jeff Beck, the undisputed ambassador of innovation. Thank you for your time on Planet Earth. Pranaam.
Bodhisattwa Ghosh is a Kolkata-based guitar player and composer, helming several bands, among which is The Bodhisattwa Trio. Their latest album, Frontier, will be released in April 2023. Recorded live in Koprivnica, it features the Mimika Orchestra, Zagreb, Croatia.